


And I The Elder And More Terrible

by orphan_account



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-30
Updated: 2015-01-30
Packaged: 2018-03-09 15:45:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3255377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jaime Lannister is sent west to hunt out his sister.</p>
<p>by sunneinsplendour</p>
            </blockquote>





	And I The Elder And More Terrible

AND I THE ELDER AND MORE TERRIBLE

 

_We are two lions littered in one day,_

_And I the elder and more terrible._

-       Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare.

 

_A truth should exist_   
_It should not be used like this._

_And if I love you,_

_Is that a fact or a weapon?_

            - We Are Hard On Each Other, Margaret Atwood.

 

He keeps a list of his dead and it soothes him well, at night to find their names kept like prayer beads in his back pocket. He runs through them intermittently, as mice run nervously past his straw bed and outside, drunken soldiers give themselves up to the pleasures of darkness.

Jaime grits his teeth, when their catcalls reverberate through his tent coupled with the bawdy laughter of women, and counts:

_Belis. Garigus. Jory Cassel. Rossart, as piss streamed down his leg. The air had smelt warm that night. Hornwood’s whelp at the Whispering Wood. And his King too, but only by proxy._

_And Aerys Targareyen, writhing and whimpering like a rat on his throne of swords, I mustn’t forget Aerys._

A strange practice, but it helps him nonetheless, keeps him in check every time he slings the white cloak across his back. Reminds him that he doesn’t wear it anymore as a mark of honour –  _if he ever did_  – but as the mark of a target, just waiting for the right arrow to find its place between his shoulders.

One day, the dead will catch up with him and strike him down, though not with his own hand. His conscience might not be clean but Jaime can still live with the gaunt-faced man he sees everyday in the cracked glass.

“The only thing that matters in the end,” he recalls his father saying, so well it is as though Tywin is in the room with him, the day he had raged about Tysha, the bed of blood, a dozen and a half silver coins and one gold, “is how much sin you can live with.”

 

-

 

            Their days are made of marching, backs bowed as hoarfrost passes them, a multi-headed serpent coiling its way to Casterly Rock. Jaime marches with the men now, where once he would have a horse between his legs – white and pure as the cloak he doesn’t deserve – and when they stop to make camp, he has to undo the ache of his legs with his own clumsy fingers.  _It’s more egalitarian this way_ , the little silver-haired Queen had told him, wearing a straight face as she dispatched a thousand Unsullied to swell his troops,  _the men will not resent their captains if they march alongside them._

             _It’s easier for the huntsman_ , is what Jaime thinks at night, when he massages a rock of tension from his thigh,  _they’ll think they’ve killed any old soldier, not the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, left bereft in a realm ruled by Queens._

            “You musn’t talk like that,” Brienne tells him one day when they rest against the bough of a tree; “No one plans to murder you in your bed.” 

            “Ah, wench,” he replies, half-fond, “Do not mistake this war for one of the battles you heard sung about at your father’s table.”

            The woman is stubborn, her mouth set in a firm line. “I cannot believe they have any intention of killing you. My lady spared you for a purpose.” 

            Jaime’s smile fades at that.

            “I know,” he says, soft and bitter as winter snow, his phantom fingers clench and clutch at air, “But for what?”

 

-

 

            Another moon turns before they reach Casterly Rock. The brick-red fortress sits atop five hundred feet of stone and wealth, as though lying in wait of their arrival.

            Jaime blinks once, twice. He imagines he can hear the crash of waves from where he stands and a woman, sweet and lonely, singing her son to sleep.

             _We were Gods here once_  is the thought that strikes him, followed by an assault of memory: sun-streaked days spent clambering down steep boulders to reach the sea, stringing Cersei’s hair with seashells when he still had ten fingers, good and nimble. It had been hot, the summer sun benevolent and they had swum to cool themselves before lying down together on the sand. Cersei’s clothes had clung to him like a second skin and all her kisses tasted like tears. Afterwards, they went exploring the caves, fingers looped together and the shadows they had cast upon the wall had been great and fearsome as deities.

             _Or perhaps they had only mistook them for such,_ Jaime thinks, _perhaps even then they were just beasts in disguise._

 

-

 

            They send him in first, before they send in siege towers, dragons, men with painted faces to knock down Casterly’s stout walls.  _To treat with his sister_  is the command given but Jaime knows the truth.

            (You do not need legions to smoke out a lone cat. All you need is a fellow hunter to match it, eye for eye, tooth for every tooth.)            

 

-

 

            “You have brought war to my father’s house,” are the first words his sister speaks and they fall like drumbeats at his feet.

            Cersei is not as he remembered. She is slimmer, sinewy, the flesh melted off her like gold stripped from an ornamental sword. There are lines he cannot recall tracing with his fingertips around her eyes and mouth. 

             _We have grown old_ , he thinks,  _we should be careful with one another._

            “They are willing to settle this peaceably,” he finally says and she raises an eyebrow, believing it no less than him.

            “On what terms?” 

            “Your surrender.”

            “Surrender?” she asks, but it is the question that is not voiced that sets the air around them shaking. The question  _from which war? The war fought against the King and his like for seventeen long years? Perhaps, the war we fought with Father, to see if we could ever wear our own skins? Or is the war in this room, the rift unhealed, the words pronounced three times and never returned, the saviour who did not reach in time, from_ which war _do they desire surrender?_

            After regarding him for a long moment, Cersei turns away, with a roll of her eyes, sweeping the conversation beneath her. But Jaime does not stop staring so easily.

            His sister moves towards the lone window in the room, light flickering over her face.

            Her hair has grown back to the crown of her temple.

 

-

 

            That night, they do not make love.

            They  _fuck_ , like animals; bodies thrashing on the pallet and Cersei leaves scars, long as the grass of the Dothraki sea, on his back.

            Afterwards, she falls asleep, her limbs confined to one side of the bed, not wrapped around him as in the days of their childhood. It’s partly what makes it easier, to do what he does next, wrap one hand around the hollow of her throat and  _tighten_  until the only sound left in the room is the rise and fall of his own breath.

 

-

 

Outside, the sea churns; an army waits in the rushes.

Inside, Jaime Lannister adds his sister’s name to the rosary of his dead, only one bead after his own. 

 


End file.
